Clean air, water basic requirements of life

Once again, Rose Valley water users are on a boil water advisory. While this time it is from a break in the line, it still is the umpteenth in the past several years.

Clean air to breathe and clean water to drink are the very basic requirements for life. Nothing, and I mean nothing, trumps those two. And yet, for years, this city council has given lip service and poor planning to our water problems while trying every device to get a new city hall.

While it is nice and convenient for our civil servants to have one place to work from, it’s hardly a priority.

Consider Langford, a city of comparable population on Vancouver Island. That city does have one city hall, in a building shared with others, that houses their city employees, one third the number of ours. So, unless they are running a skeleton crew there, which I doubt, our roster of city employees is seriously bloated.

Apparently, locals have been building empires here at the expense of already overburdened taxpayers. With three times the employees of Langford, perhaps the notion of only one edifice to house them is impractical anyway.

Back to the main concern — our water. If West Kelowna council had put as much thought and effort into ensuring we had consistently drinkable water as it has into scheming for a new city hall, we would have had the water problem solved long ago. Why are priorities, true priorities, not treated as priorities by our elected, and potentially soon to be un-elected, civic leaders?

Lee Karvonen West Kelowna